>> good morning, welcome to the san francisco board of supervisors land use and economic development committee. my name is scott wiener, the chairman of the committee. to my left is supervisor david

chiu, a member of the committee. i apologize for beginning a few minutes late, but the subway was experiencing some sort of melt down this morning so it took me a little longer than anticipate today get here. we'll be joined by supervisor jane kim shortly. our clerk is melissaer and i want to thank sfgtv for broadcasting today's meeting john ross and mark bunch. and for those who are watching or here, we are on item 1, we are hearing at 9:00 a.m. and then the remaining items on the agenda we will recess and then hear at 1:30 p.m. we're trying to juggle land use committee in conjunction with the budget committee since we are the heightest budget season. so, madam clerk, do you have any announcements? >> yes. please make sure to silence on cell phones and electronic devices. completed speaker cards including copies of files should be submitted to the clerk. item acted upon today will

appear on the june 259tion board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> thank you. madam clerk, can you please call item number 1? >> item number 1 is a hearing requesting the municipal transportation agency, department of public works, planning department, and the county transportation authority to provide an update on the better market street project, including schedule and progress on improving interagency coordination, and the proposal to construct a separated bicycle lane on mission street; given that bicycling is an important element of the city's commitment to a revitalized market street and a critical component of the city's transportation network, the departments are requested to discuss how diverting bicycles to mission street is in the best interest of the city and the better market street project. >> thank you very much. instead of market street. ~ first i want to thank everyone for being here for today's hearing. i and supervisor chiu called for the hearing so we could receive an update about the better market street plan. this plan is one of the most important plans that's moving forward in the city right now. market street in many ways is the spine of our street system. it is critically important to many different modes of transportation in the city and for many years market street frankly has under performed. it is not up to standards that we need it to be as a world class city, as a major roadway

that can accommodate all the different modes of transit in an effective manner. earlier this year the board, sittinging as the board and also the transportation authority held several hearings on the status of the plan. a number of supervisors echoing various many people in the public, we expressed concern about the slow pace of the plan. the plan was supposed to be in process already physically and there have been a number of delays. we also expressed frustration about our perception that there was insufficient coordination among the numerous agencies involved in formulating this project and moving it forward and we expressed a strong desire for there to be better and more consistent coordination and that lack of coordination was occurring despite the fact that we had a

very strong dpw project manager leading the team. the hearings were a bit tense, but i think that as a result some of that communication, there have been some positive changes. it is my sense we have i think a higher level of coordination than we had before, and i think that we are potentially moving in a more positive direction. and, so, today we're going to be hearing an update about what has been happening over the last number of months so that we can exercise oversight of the project and also what the plan is moving forward so that this project can be formulated and delivered in a timely manner. we also want to talk about there are two specific things that we'll be discussing today in addition to the plan as a whole. one of them is the discussion about market street versus mission street in terms of which would be the primary

biking thoroughfare for the project. i know that mission street is being considered as one of the i think ceqa alternatives and there's been concern expressed by many in the community and i and president chiu i think have expressed similar concern about the mission street option, but we would like to hear about what the status is of those various options. in addition, we had extensive conversation at our last hearing about the possibility of short-term trial projects, understanding that the entire global market street project will take a number of years to deliver and that should not prevent us from making short-term changes, whether they're temporary or permanent, to try to improve or at least deliver potential aspects of improvements to market street. i want to thank the department of public works for its recent

repaving of the curb lane east of octavia, i believe. i think that that has already provided some significant benefits. and, so, those are the kinds of things that we want to think creatively about, what can we do in the short term to improve things even if it proceeds delivery of the entire project. so, before we get to that, president chiu. >> thank you, mr. chair, and i want to thank you for partnering to really move this project forward. i also want to thank all the members of the public who have been focused on this for a number of years. let me start first by just mentioning that in 2011 i sponsored a resolution that was unanimously supported by this board to urge the sfmta and other department agencies to focus on the better market street project to speed up transit along market street while improving the comfort of people walking, biking, supporting local culture function of the street.

i'm paraphrasing from the title of that resolution. and while i do certainly appreciate the process supervisor wiener alluded to i think in recent months the management and coordination of this project between different departments has improved, we have a ways to go which is why we're here at this hearing. in addition to the topics that supervisor wiener has discussed, i am particularly interested in two issues. one, just want to get a sense of the budget and where we stand in thinking about funding for this project. and then i do want to reiterate ensuring that we are focused on near term and pilot improvements. there was quite a bit of work done on those based on past hearings that we've had and i also want to reiterate thanks to the dpw and mta departments for the recent repaving on and repainting of bikeways, which i personally experience almost every day. but we have been told that there are hopefully three six-month, 12-month shorter term projects and want to get a

sense of the progress on that and really get a sense from a project management standpoint around deliverables and schedule dates that we know that we're going to be able to hit. so, with that, mr. chair, turn it back over to you. >> thank you, president chiu. with that island like to call up our director of pushtions mohammed nuru. there will be other city departments [speaker not understood]. >> good morning and thank you for having us here today. ~ as as you said, the better market street team has been busy at work and we have been working very hard to try and make the difference and improve market street. today's presentation will share highlights on those progress that has been made. and since we last reported to the board, the city team has been working very hard with our

consultants, drilling down on the three concept designs that have been out there. that is the shared lane along market street, the central track along market street, and the mission street design. since two workshops, we have done quite a bit of work along the lines of transportation studies. we've also done some public space analysis to inform the design of some of the decisions that you will be hearing today as we prepare to go into the environmental. the team has also worked very closely with the community stakeholders and some of them are here. a few weeks ago we actually had a meeting to try to look at market street a little bit closer and try to resolve some of the conflicts that we started to see, some of the trade-offs. at this time just for an update, we will be finishing

what's known as the planning phase. we have one more series of community workshops coming up in july. and in august we hope to begin the environmental phase which will study all the options and elements that will come out of the conceptual design. today's presentation kerry rudnig who has been working on the better market street project, will share some of those design ideas with you. andrew lee from the mta, who is the lead for transportation, will go through some of the transportation studies and we'll be able to share that with you. and [speaker not understood] from the planning department will share some of the urban design and some of the public life findings. but before the presentation starts, my colleagues are here i believe director [speaker not understood] is here and i'll ask him to come up and say a few words and also believe john

is here also? john ram will say a few words. >> mr. nuru, do you have presentations we can see in front of us that you could hand to us? great. >> we have a presentation -- >> are they printed out or -- >> they're not printed out? okay. if we can get them e-mailed, thank you. ~ . great, thank you. director reiskin, welcome. >> good morning, chairperson wiener, supervisor chiu. thanks, and thanks to mohammed for his great leadership on this project. thank you all for your interest in continued advocacy for the project. we're certainly faced with a once in a generation if not more opportunity to rethink and remake market street. and while i know that we're all impatient for those improvements to come, it is an extraordinary complex street and extraordinarily important street to san francisco. as a civic street and

specifically as a transportation street, i think your -- i apologize for your commute this morning. but what happens underground where we have all of our train lines converging on market street is the same thing that happens above ground where much of the surface muni system funnels into market street. and this is a legacy of the layout of the city by jasper o'farrell 150 years ago by putting these two street grids together. and more than 100 years of decisions about infrastructure investment that have really hard wired our transit system into market street. by the way, the routes are designed by where the rails are placed by where the overhead lines are. so, i say all of this just to reinforce how important market street is to the transportation system, and i'm glad to be reminded of the 2011 resolution where there was a specific emphasis on making muni work better on market street. because anything that we can do

to improve muni operations on market street will have positive ripple effects throughout the rest of the muni system. conversely, anything we do to slow muni down or to not take advantage of the redesign of market street to optimize muni performance will lead us to fail to realize those system wide muni benefits. so, i just wanted to take the opportunity to reinforce the importance of market street to the entire transportation system, but particularly to muni. want to assure you that we all are working very collaboratively and well together. the staff working on this project is really the a-team from the various city agencies. we've got great stakeholder involvement. [speaker not understood] mohammed referenced that took place a couple years ago is an all star team of land use transportation, civic folk helping us think through these different options. i know there is concern

particularly with the mission street option and i share many of those concerns. i think if it's not going to be a world class bicycle facility that will really be a better choice and naturally attract cyclists to mission street and many bicycles still end up on market street, it won't have achieved its goal of trying to deaconflict transit and cycling. but i think it absolutely worth our analysis through the environmental process, both federal and local. so, i'd encourage folks to remain open about that. the other thing i would say about mission street is consider perhaps not the current state of mission street to be the baseline case. what we're looking at currently in the environmental impact or in the environmental review for the transit effectiveness project is -- are some pretty significant changes on mission street to make that work better for muni because that's the

backbone, as you know, of the 14 and the 14 l. and some other routes that run mission street. so i think changes are going to come to mission street one way or another. i think it's do we try to balance transit and bikes on both streets or do we try to focus transit on one street and make a world class facility on the other street. again, i'm not sure that the mission street option will ultimately turn out to be the best one or even workable, but again, i certainly think it's worth studying. and i guess the final thing i'd say is when we're thinking about market street and trying to figure out how to allocate space on the right-of-way, which is at the core of us making this project so complex and sometimes contentious and difficult, we should think not just building front to building front. but there are streets and plazas and other spaces that, that radiate off of market street that are a part of the whole public realm that we have to work with here.

so, with that, i'll turn it over to john ram, planning director, to say a few words. it's a very important good project and we're happy to be a part of it. >> thank you, mr. reiskin. i have one question and i agree with you. this is incredibly complex, there's no doubt about it. one complexity in terms of the mission versus market question -- i assume this will be thoroughly vetted during the process, but i'm wondering if there is any preliminary data in terms of what the -- you talked about whether it's the subway or market street that sort of bottleneck that happens, as you have a lot of lines merging together onto one thoroughfare, in terms of moving the 14 from mission onto market, what the impact will be on just the volume of bus traffic with limited islands to stop. we see it now, even with the lines that are there, there will be three or four buses in a row and they can't all get to the island. and the 14 is as regular or

more so. it's a high-frequency line. is there any preliminary data about what the impact fa pact will be on muni above ground service if we put the 14 on the market street? >> it is something that will be the core part of the analysis. ~. andrew, when he speaks to the transportation impacts, might be able to speak to it as we go through the presentation. but there's a lot that we're planning to do on market street. i'd say in any scenario that will help improve the flow of muni, so, we would be kind of buying some capacity on market street that would enable the 14 to work. but that will have impact. it's putting more transit on an already crowded transit corridor. again, if a lot of the cycling traffic isn't there, a lot of the auto traffic isn't there, if there are other changes we can make in terms of stop consolidation and separating local and express service, it may well be an excellent solution, but that's part of

what will be a very robust transportation analysis that will have to accompany all three of these options. >> thank you very much. okay. so, director ram from the planning department. thank you. >> good morning, supervisors. i just -- not to reiterate everything mohammed and ed said, this has been a very interesting process because frankly it's been a learning curve i think for all of us. i don't think any of us -- certainly i didn't realize how complex this project would be. and i think it's been -- and part of the reason it's taken time to get to where we are is because we are kind of learning as we go and understanding the space limitations on market street, and understanding that the complexity is a multiple goal. so, to me what it comes down to is the amount of space we have between building frontages on market street for buses, for pedestrians, and for bicycles. and what we have all agreed to, and to layout these three alternatives that will be analyzed in the environmental

impact report, each alternative has something to like and frankly something to not like. one of the alternatives for example will take out the sidewalk space to better accommodate buses and bicycles. and there are some concerns i have frankly about that. i know that there are serious concerns about bicycles on mission and how to make that work. as ed said, it will work only if it is an improved situation over market. i think what we've all a graced is we need to look at all three of these alternatives, carry them forward, see what the trades are and make important decisions on the way. ~ agreed this is an important -- this is obviously a critically important project and it is exciting to be sitting here with my colleagues and actually figuring this out at this point. it's an extraordinarily important street and it's one that i think we all share the goals of improving muni rider ship, improving the public spaces on market, and improving the bicycling conditions. with that said, i'll in deference to everyone's time, i can just close by thanking the department of public works and

mta for all their work on this and for all departments who are kind of collaborating closely together on this. and neil sherri from our office will make a more detailed presentation on the public space characteristics. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> hi, i'm kelly rudd nick, assistant project manager from the better market street project. ~ i'm going to give you a little taste of what the better market street team has been working on and a little teaser for the public workshops that are coming up in july. after i give you sort of this brief overview, andrew lee will talk about the specific transportation and neil sherri will talk about the public space. so, these are the baseline improvements that will happen as we've talked and people are familiar with the three options that we're looking at, options 1, 2, and 3.

and these are the -- these will be consistent in all three options. these are overarching goals that have been guiding the process as the team has been working on these conceptual designs for the options. one key is that market street is a street that is in flux as we know right now, and it is changing and will continue to change. so, one of the key guiding goals is to look at market street as a flexible space for the future. and these are, you know, how we've been looking at the ways of experiencing market street. so, prioritizing the pedestrians. looking at cycles as a part of the public life. really looking at the high-quality pedestrian public realm and, again, the flexibility built into that for change over time. and prioritizing the transit

experience, both speed and reliability and the actual, you know, a lot of time is spent on market street waiting so the improving the waiting experience as well. and looking at market street, not just as a place to pass through, but a destination where people will choose market street as their -- not only their destination, but also their -- like a great route to get where they want to go. and, so, one of the guiding principles is these user families, looking at the street user family, the transit experience. and we've been over the three design options, but what is key in this is that we're looking at all of these and all of the elements of these when we move into environmental. so, it's not that there's one or the other or the other, but that all of the pieces of these options will be studied in environmental. and the first option is a

market street option. this is the option that most closely reflects what is there today. it has the baseline improvements and it ha the same existing cycle track up to 8th street, and then the shared lane beyond that. this requires the least amount of moving the curb. so, gives us the most flexibility for street life zone. option 2 is the market street option with a cycle track, and this gives us a dedicated cycle track, except for a small break between sixth street and grant. and the third option is the market street mission street option. in this case, the market street option 1, the shared lane option with the baseline improvements would happen on market street. and there would be a dedicated cycle track on mission street. as you mti